Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case

Hugh Pickens writes "The Orlando Sentinel reports that a google search was made for the term 'foolproof suffocation' on the Anthony family's computer the day Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen alive by her family — a search that did not surface at Casey Anthony's trial for first degree murder. In the notorious 31 days which followed, Casey Anthony repeatedly lied about her and her daughter's whereabouts and at Anthony's trial, her defense attorney argued that her daughter drowned accidentally in the family's pool. Anthony was acquitted on all major charges in her daughter's death, including murder. Though computer searches were a key issue at Anthony's murder trial, the term 'foolproof suffocation' never came up. 'Our investigation reveals the person most likely at the computer was Casey Anthony,' says investigative reporter Tony Pipitone. Lead sheriff's Investigator Yuri Melich sent prosecutors a spreadsheet that contained less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day and included only Internet data from the computer's Internet Explorer browser – one Casey Anthony apparently stopped using months earlier — and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for 'foolproof suffocation.' Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said in a statement to WKMG that it's 'a shame we didn't have it. (It would have) put the accidental death claim in serious question.'"

Comments

Are we still dragging this out?

[davydagger]

She was found innocent, and a bunch of big media dipshits, and powerful figures are still trying to lynch her. Why? She's poor, and in all this rubble, they want one big poor villian to crucify, so they can shift the focus away.

Part of the assault on her character includes the fact that case was concieved out of rape, something that would have every major neo-liberal "feminist" group up in arms if it was someone the system was protecting.

I'll tell you something else. I'll contrast this to another femme fatale who got out of prison around the same time. "Amanda Knox"

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-edition/2011/10/21/seattle-pr-firm-reveals-efforts-to.html?page=all

Looks like the media industry wasted no time revealing if you got money to spend on a PR campaign they could fix your broken character flaws and get murder raps thrown out.

if its any more proof of just how biased the system is, and the system is run by hoardes of PR/advertising goons and lawyers, who seem to want nothing more than to shake you down for verbal and character protection money.

Of course the real enemies of this system are those who can't raise enough money to pay for their services.

Its sick, its real sick.

Re:No Death Penalty

[SternisheFan]

Actually Life in prison without parole is less costly to taxpayers. Each individual death penalty case automatically gets appealed to the Supreme Court, at a cost of over $2,000,000 per. Here's one link: http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html

And a google page of links: http://www.google.com/search?q=real+cost+of+death+penalty+cases&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=_FeyULTuO7K00AGu-oG4BA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=480&bih=295

Re:No Death Penalty

[dasunt]

Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

I'm against it because it gives the state too much power.

I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

Re:First

[meta-monkey]

Exactly. People like to play Jr. Detective and assign rational motives to people's action, and frequently it just won't work. I remember watching a round table news discussion show, and they were talking about a murder in which a pregnant woman opened the door to her home and she and the unborn baby were stabbed to death, but her 4-ish year old child who was right there was left unharmed. The estranged husband was the prime suspect, and one commentator said "ah, yes, stands to reason, since why else leave the other child alone?" And the other commentator said the thing I thought, "how can you assign rational motives to someone who stabs a pregnant to lady death?"

Re:No Death Penalty

[nbauman]

"the system is deeply flawed, and the emergence of DNA evidence just exposed some of those flaws." For most criminal cases DNA evidence plays no role, and there is no reason to believe those people are less likely to be innocent.

You are correct.

I heard a panel where Barry C. Scheck and some others from the Innocence Project spoke.

Scheck said that the important lesson of DNA testing was not that a few specific people were innocent, but that it demonstrates the error rate of the criminal justice system. The DNA cases are a sampling.

People were falsely convicted, most often by eyewitness testimony and confessions, and the Innocence Project could prove that they were innocent because they were fortunate enough to be involved in crimes that involved DNA evidence.

This demonstrates how unreliable eyewitness testimony and confessions are.

It also demonstrates that other people must have been convicted falsely by eyewitness testimony and confessions, but have no DNA evidence to exonerate them.

(This was actually demonstrated before DNA testing. Psychologists tested the accuracy of eyewitness testimony decades ago. People have been convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony in circumstances where the eyewitness couldn't possibly have recognized their face -- like being on the other side of the street, watching a crime being committed in dim light. Defense lawyers aren't allowed to have experts testify on the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony.)

Significantly, it also demonstrates how flawed the criminal justice system is.

Some of these people were on death row. The advocates of the death penalty will often claim that we're so thorough and careful to protect the rights of defendants that it's impossible for an innocent person to be convicted. (Supreme Court Justice Scalia seems to have made that argument.) The sampling of cases that can be confirmed with DNA evidence demonstrates that they're wrong.

One good story about eyewitness testimony -- a young man was on trial for rape in New England. His defense lawyer was sitting in court, with a young man in a plaid shirt sitting next to him. He cross-examined the victim, asked her to describe the man who raped her, and then pulled the prosecutor's favorite line -- "Do you see that man in this court?" She pointed to the young man who had been sitting next to him. The lawyer asked the young man to identify himself. It wasn't the defendant. The lawyer had brought a decoy. The case collapsed, and his defendant was acquitted. But the judge sanctioned the lawyer. Apparently, they don't sanction the prosecution for bringing an witness who's so unreliable that she will testify that the wrong person did it. But they do sanction a defense lawyer who demonstrates how unreliable the witness is.